Ridley Scott’s The Martian is a splendidly told tale of survival and pluck, reminiscent of the novel Robinson Crusoe and the films Life of Pi and Castaway. In this case, the hero is Mark Watney, an astronaut on a mission to Mars who is left behind by his crewmates when he is presumed dead after being lost during a devastating storm. Through sheer determination and an extraordinary application of his scientific know-how, Watney manages to survive. For example, realizing that his food supplies would run out long before a rescue mission could ever reach him, he endeavors to produce water and, through some creative fertilizing, grow an impressive crop of potatoes. At another critical juncture in the narrative, as his life hangs in the balance, Watney says, “I’ll just have to science the s*** out of this!”

In time, NASA officials, through a careful observation of surveillance photos, realize that Watney is still alive and they attempt to contact him. Some of the most thrilling and emotionally moving scenes in the film have to do with these initial communications across tens of millions of miles. Eventually, the crew who left him behind discover that he is alive and they contrive, with all of their strength and intelligence, to get him back. The film ends (spoiler alert!), with the now somewhat grizzled Watney back on earth, lecturing a class of prospective astronauts on the indispensability of practical scientific intelligence: “You solve one problem and then another and then another; and if you solve enough of them, you get to come home.” This summary speech communicates what appears to be the central theme of the movie: the beauty and power of the technical knowledge the sciences provide.

But I would like to explore another theme that is implicit throughout the film, namely, the inviolable dignity of the individual human being. The circumstances are certainly unique and Watney himself is undoubtedly an impressive person, but it remains nevertheless strange that people would move heaven and earth, spend millions of dollars, and in the case of the original crew, risk their lives in order to rescue this one man. If a clever, friendly, and exquisitely trained dog had been left behind on Mars, everyone would have felt bad, but no one, I think it’s fair to say, would have endeavored to go back for it. Now why is this the case? Much hinges upon how one answers that question.

The classical Christian tradition, with its roots in the Bible, would argue that there is a qualitative and not merely quantitative difference between human beings and other animals, that a human being is decidedly notsimply an extremely clever ape. Unlike anything else in the material creation, we have been made, the Scriptures hold, according to God’s image and likeness, and this imaging has been construed by most of the masters of the theological tradition as a function of our properly spiritual capacities of mind and will.

With The Martian in mind, let me focus on the first of these. Like other animals, humans can take in the material world through sense experience, and they can hold those images in memory. But unlike any other animal, even the most intelligent, humans can engage in properly abstract thinking. In other words, they can think, not only about this or that particular state of affairs, but about fundamental patterns—what the medieval called “forms”—that make things what they are. The sciences—both theoretical and practical—depend upon and flow from precisely this kind of cogitation. But truly abstract thinking, which goes beyond any particularity grounded in matter, demonstrates that the principle of such reflection is not reducible to matter, that it has an immaterial or spiritual quality. And this implies that the mind or the soul survives the dissolution of the body, that it links us to the dimension of God. Plato showed this in a simple but compelling manner. When the mind entertains an abstract truth, say that 2 + 3 = 5, it has in a very real way left behind the world of shifting impressions and evanescent memories; it has, to use his still haunting metaphor, slipped free of the cave and entered a realm of light. And this explains why the very science so celebrated by The Martian is also the solution to the moral puzzle at the heart of the film. We will go to the ends of the universe to save an endangered person, precisely because we realize, inchoately or otherwise, that there is something uniquely precious about him or her. We know in our bones that in regard to a human being something eternal is at stake.

In the context of what Pope Francis has called our “throwaway culture,” where the individual human being is often treated as a means to an end, or worse, as an embarrassment or an annoyance to be disposed of, this is a lesson worth relearning.

A while back my kids were watching the Nick Jr. cartoon Ni Hao, Kai-Lan, and I happened to see something that has troubled me ever since.

Kai-Lan is a little girl with a friend named Rintoo, and in this particular episode Rintoo isn’t feeling special. Kai-Lan and her other friends seem to have an instinctive feeling that Rintoo must be special somehow, and spend most of the episode trying to figure out why that is. After some searching, they finally figure it out. At the climax of the show, Kai-Lan announces with a little song that she has found the source of Rintoo’s specialness! I suppose it was too much to hope that she’d quote directly from the Catechism, since it’s kind of hard to rhyme “man is the only creature on earth that God has willed for its own sake, and he alone is called to share, by knowledge and love, in God’s own life” with “it was for this end that he was created, and this is the fundamental reason for his dignity.” But I was surprised and distressed at what she came up with: he’s fast. That’s what makes him special. And she went on to tell her young viewers that the next time they’re not feeling special, they should remember what they’re really good at, and know that that’s what makes them special.

Anyone else find that disturbing?

As I watched the little characters dance around and celebrate the various skills that supposedly made each one of them special, I was guessing that this wasn’t going to be the episode where Kai-Lan’s slow, mentally ill, physically disabled friend was introduced, because then things would get really awkward.

Though I don’t attribute any malevolent intent to the show’s writers, I think the sentiments expressed in this episode belie one of the disturbing logical results of a completely secular worldview. It’s an interesting look at what happens when we take part of the natural law that’s written on our hearts—in this case, the fact that every human is special—and try to explain it without God. Kai-Lan and her friends know on some level that Rintoo is definitely special; and yet they are products of a secular culture which teaches that every truth must be provable by the scientific method in order to be accepted.

There are two main definitions for special: one is “regarded with particular esteem or affection” and the other is “superior in comparison to others of the same kind.” The first is a better definition for describing the inherent specialness of each person, since each of us is regarded with particular esteem and affection by our Creator. But you can’t get there by looking at the material world alone. In order to confine specialness to the realm of the observable and the provable, you must go with the later, twisted understanding, which leaves you with a malleable definition of what it is to be special. In Rintoo’s case, what if the setting of the episode were moved to the U.S. Track and Field Team’s practice arena, where he wouldn’t seem fast at all? Or what if he became disabled and could no longer get around quickly? For that matter, what if all of humanity got together and agreed that being fast was not a good trait? Would Rintoo still be special?

Chances are, he has other things he’s good at. But what if he didn’t? What if he were the dumbest, ugliest, most rejected, immobile person in the world with not a single thing to offer his fellow man? Then would he be special?

Without God, the closest we can get to explaining the truth of each individual’s specialness is to say that he or she possesses certain exceptional skills or qualities that are currently valued by other human beings, or to perhaps note the fact that each person is different by virtue of his or her unique DNA. But neither of those statements articulate the full truth—and somewhere, deep down inside, we all know it. The problem is this: the reason every single one of us is inherently special—even the most flawed, the most unproductive, and the most decrepit among us—is because we are special to Someone. It’s because we are loved and valued by God himself.

When people agree on this, even if it is based on vaguely theistic concepts of God rather than passionate Christian devotion, it acts as a societal safety valve. We at least agree that it is not up to us to determine what makes another person special, or whether or not he’s special at all. Each person’s value comes from Something outside of and higher than people’s opinions, a Force untouchable by human caprice. When we lose this concept and start thinking that we can value other people based on demonstrable evidence, the safety valve is gone.

That’s what scares me about this line of thinking. Right now, the dark implications of this worldview are easy to ignore; here in the Western world, we live in a time of unprecedented stability, peace, and abundance that makes it relatively easy for us all to get along. There are only a few types of people whose specialness we have motive to disregard (the severely disabled and the unborn, mainly). But that probably won’t last forever. If any elements of society were to be destabilized, we faced widespread resource shortage, or any other situation came up that caused an epidemic of fear and tension, there would be a lot more pressure to disregard the value of other people’s lives. If we continue to see our fellow human beings as special based on arbitrary, flexible definitions that are ultimately rooted in human judgment of evidence, the devaluation of human life will spread to even more segments of society. And one day it could be you or someone you love who is no longer considered special.
 
 
Originally posted at National Catholic Register. Used with permission.
(Image credit: DvidsHub)